I’ve been revisiting some more of my older school songs and making videos of them to help anyone new wanting to sing them. I’ll mention three, shall I?!

Stop! Touch The History On The Breeze was composed for a trio of schools in different parts of Northumberland: in the countryside; next to a castle; and by the sea. We composed the words of the verses together and the tune seems to be part of my collection of songs for children that use irregular time signatures because children don’t have trouble with such things if they’re introduced with enthusiasm and confidence…I have found, anyway! Listen to “Stop! Touch The History On The Breeze” here!

St. John Vianney’s School Song was composed for…well I’m sure you can guess. This was the very, very wonderful Catholic Primary School I worked in in Brisbane. Actually I do believe that this one stays in 4/4 throughout. It has other difficulties, but children are exceptional if you give them self-belief and again the whole school really went for this one and loved it greatly. I enjoyed making this video because not only did it remind me of that awesome school and the colleagues I had there and the amazing work we did, but I got to use lots of my excellent brother’s photos – he’s been to John Vianney’s house in Ars and other places linked to the saintly fellow. Listen to “St. John Vianney’s School Song” here!

And finally from the selection, I’ll go for Boo To My Ration Book which I composed for  some Year 5 classes in Wakefield. They were studying WW2. I wrote this song and taught it to them and also taught them Hey Little Hen which is an actual WW2 song about rationing. I composed Boo to fit with Hey as a partner song. The classes sang them together. It’s since been sung by a few different choirs – adult choirs seem to like it too, which is nice. The photos are of Grandad Webster (who was killed in WW2) and Mum’s ration books! Listen to “Boo To My Ration Book” here!